Vees huge interstate effort for Mallala
Formula Vee Australia remains on the Hi-Tec Oils Super Series bill for what is the final round of its national championship with competitors coming from far and wide to compete.
Many interstate drivers have made the trip to South Australia to contest the final round of the Australian series at Mallala Motorsport Park. Most notably eight drivers from Queensland and three from Western Australia.
A large majority of the interstate competitors have stayed on following the Formula Vee National Challenge event at The Bend Motorsport Park last week.
Formula Vee Australia President Rod Lisson is one of these drivers, travelling over from WA with his wife Kathy and Michael Llyod.
“We've got a new transporter, a nice big Mercedes Actros with a trailer, it's lovely, it's called the Vee Keeper,” Lisson said.
“We're hoping to get more for next year. What we're doing is decking out the truck and the trailer so that it'll hold 12 vehicles all together.
“We just want to bring as many cars as we can and make it as cheap as possible for them all, once you share the fuel amongst that many, it gets much more affordable.
“Five weeks ago we were at Queensland Raceway, Kathy and I drove there and then we went down to Bendigo to pick up our trailer. Then we drove back to WA, we had a race meeting in there two weeks ago, we shoved everything straight in the truck and headed to SA.
“All up so far, I think we've done about 12,000 kilometres in the last five weeks.”
Lisson expressed that the Queensland contingency should take a lot of plaudits. All eight Queensland competitors met up at Morgan Park Raceway early last week to load up the transporter and head down south.
“A massive effort from Queensland, one of their newer members has got a prime mover and the club was able to borrow a car transporter off somebody else, so they hooked it up to the prime mover,” he said.
Several of the competitors have gone back to work between events, while some those that can work remotely have stayed in SA visiting many tourist attractions during the week.
“It’s good, you make a bit of a holiday of it,” Lisson expressed. “We all catch up and head around town, today we went out to the National Motor Museum and stopped at the Big Rocking Horse for some lunch.
“We all get together whenever we can, I think there's a few of us getting together on Thursday night.”
The Formula Vee community is well known for its camaraderie, but this is quite unique for grass level motorsport.
For Formula Vee it will be the first time that an Australian championship round or national challenge event has been held at Mallala since 2017.
While the locals know the track like the back of their hands, for the others Friday will be about learning or re-learning the unique layout.
“Expect lots of streaming duels down the back straights,” he forecast. “There's also a really nice tight sequence just before you come back onto the front straight, that is sensational. From memory Turn 1 you throw it into their almost at full speed and hope it sticks.
“It’s the perfect size track for us, we can get lots of cars wide into different corners. Turn 5 we went in about three or four cars wide last time I was there, it was quite scary, but a lot of fun.
“It's going to be a really suitable Formula Vee track, you'll see a lot of passing and some really good action."
Formula Vee Australia has four races across the weekend, two will be livestreamed on the Super Series YouTube channel, the others will be broadcast on SBS on Demand, Fox Sports and Kayo.
The full schedule can be viewed here.
Along with Australian Formula Vee it will feature the TFH Hire TA2 Muscle Cars, Formula Ford Super Series, TFH Hire Legend Cars Australia and Innovation Race Cars.
Race tickets, campsites and park and view passes can be bought here.